


Oh, Mother

by alicekittridge



Category: Killing Eve (TV 2018)
Genre: Angst, F/F, Flash Fic, Oneshot, POV Third Person, Past Tense, Sexual Content, mention of suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-08
Updated: 2019-07-08
Packaged: 2020-06-24 12:25:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19723651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alicekittridge/pseuds/alicekittridge
Summary: Eve asks about Villanelle's past.





	Oh, Mother

**Author's Note:**

> This was marinating while I was on a road trip. I hope you enjoy it, even though it's a bit sad.

> **_Mother, make me_ **
> 
> **_Make me a bird of prey_ **
> 
> **_So I can rise above this_ **
> 
> **_Let it fall away_ **

**—Florence & the Machine, “Mother”**

—

It was Sunday evening, and Eve had just asked Villanelle if she killed Anna.

They were at Eve’s house in Finchley—abandoned by the moustached husband, now only occupied by Eve, who, for a reason Villanelle could not put a finger on, still wasn’t filing for a divorce—and in the kitchen, having just finished dessert and sipping the dregs of the wine that Villanelle had brought from Tuscany. The question had been as sudden as an epiphany, the kind that rendered someone speechless. Villanelle was surprised to be on the receiving end of such a question, but she figured it had to happen eventually, though in reality she was hoping it wouldn’t. That wound was old but tender, and as she caught herself against the kitchen sink Villanelle felt that old, familiar dread crawling through her. For long moments she was transported back to her old life, that old affair that was made of warm apartments and pink sheets and cigarettes and every kind of blooming, and then it morphed to her standing over Anna’s body on the parlor rug, staring, staring, staring.

“I suppose,” Villanelle said at last, “I was responsible, in some way.”

“What do you mean?” Eve said. Her curiosity always seemed heightened when she had a little too much to drink, but her instincts for digging deeper didn’t fade. “How’d you do it? How _could_ you, I mean.”

“You really think I was the one holding the gun?”

Eve was quiet.

“It was suicide, Eve,” Villanelle said. She turned around. The world was a little unsteady. Maybe she’d drunk too much too. “Do you want to have sex?” she asked.

“I’m sorry,” Eve said. “I’m sorry I assumed—”

“We can do it in the chair, if you want. I’m well-acquainted.” She strode over in three strides and fell to her knees. “See?”

Eve sighed. “Oksana…”

Villanelle leaned up and kissed her quickly, roughly. “Shut up,” she growled. “You ask again, I leave. You call me by that name, this ends right here.”

Eve nodded. “Okay,” she said. “Okay.”

It was quick, and rough, and though Villanelle was angry and grey, she took what enjoyment she could. She let herself get lost in the sensation of Eve’s hands in her hair, of her quiet, desperate pleas, of Eve’s taste on her tongue and her mouth, of Eve’s thighs trembling on her shoulders. The warmth that followed when she leisurely kissed Eve’s breasts afterward.

“Don’t you want anything?” Eve asked when Villanelle pulled away completely. Her knees were sore from kneeling on linoleum for twenty minutes. She brushed them off, put her parka back on.

“Goodnight,” she said, and put her shoes on at the front door before closing it softly behind her.

The rain could be heard from the quiet of the hotel bathroom. It sounded like static on a white noise machine. Pipes would join in too, or a door closing down the hall, or someone showering next door. Villanelle listened to it all, all the while her mind tumbled, again and again, over why Eve had asked what she did, kept tumbling back into the past, where Villanelle did not like to visit.

It was more than a year ago, when she and Irina had visited Anna in Russia. That Anna had killed herself. It was more than a year ago and yet Eve asked about it like it was new news. Were you keeping that question the whole time? Villanelle wondered. Is it part of the ‘everything’ you want to know?

Eve was a smart woman. She’d figure out why Anna had done it. All she had to do was open that stupid prison file and connect the fucking dots. She’d learn that there were things even people like Villanelle didn’t want to talk about because it wasn’t just opening a can of worms; it was re-opening a wound that needed to stay closed.

Villanelle reached for the bottle of lavender bubble bath but it fell from the edge and onto the marble floor. Her head fell against the edge of the tub, where it stayed. She cursed the ghosts and the rock rising in her throat. She cursed Eve for being near-drunk and asking stupid questions.

She slid into the water until she was fully submerged in its warmth.

Perhaps half a year after Konstantin had gotten her out of prison and been assigned as her handler, he had taken her to lunch in St. Petersburg after a vigorous training session and asked after Anna. It was one of the few times that he had, but each time he asked, there was an emotion like sympathy in his eyes. He asked her about the relationship they’d had.

“Did you see her as a mother?”

“No. People don’t fuck their mothers.”

“Could that have happened?” he’d pressed.

“She wanted me to fuck her. And I did. So no,” Villanelle had said, “it couldn’t’ve happened.”

Or it could’ve, Villanelle thought now, her lungs beginning to strain, if she didn’t want me to fuck her.

There was a mother in the picture, once, but that picture burned a long time ago. There wasn’t one now, and she didn’t need one.

And Eve was different. She was seeking something different with Eve. Eve was seeking something different with her. There was no scale that was tipping to one side or the other. They were equally balanced.

Villanelle rose to the surface, gasping, resting her head on her arm. The water rippled, the tub a miniature, lavender-scented wave pool. Had she been going by routine, Villanelle would’ve turned the faucet on and given herself over to it, or to her discreet vibrator that looked like a tube of blood red lipstick, and thought of Eve, but the desire was gone. It would return, she knew. Eventually.

She just had to strangle the ghost again.


End file.
